Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged from hiding on Wednesday to deliver a rare public speech in which he told Iranians, “We can rest the day that we raise the flag of martyrs over the White House,” according to an independent translation of Persian language media reports.

The Iranian parliament’s recent investigation into a scheme to import luxury cars instead of medicine threatens to erode the credibility of a leading pro-Iran lobbying group that has long claimed that economic sanctions are preventing access to medicine in Iran.

Western media outlets reporting on the cancellation of a little-known Iranian film festival appear to have confused it with the infamous World Without Zionism conference, which in 2005 featured a call from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe Israel “from the map.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a member of Iran’s Expediency Council, a government body that has supervisory and arbitration powers over other parts of the Iranian government, the Tower reports.